Freeman’s walk-off homer lifts Dodgers over Blue Jays in 18-inning World Series epic | World Series

It took Freddie Freeman three chances to get it just right.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman drove a fastball deep into centerfield in the bottom of the 13th inning, the home fans at Dodger Stadium groaned as the ball nestled into Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Daulton Varsho’s glove – making Game 3 of the 2025 World Series just the fifth World Series game to ever reach the 14th inning. Two innings later, Freeman hit the ball even harder, but not quite high enough as Varsho chased it down before it could reach the center field wall. The two teams were now playing the second-longest World Series game of all time.

Finally, in the bottom of the 18th inning, the breakthrough came. Leading off, Freeman hit a fastball from Blue Jays reliever Brendon Little for a walk-off home run, leaving Varsho to do nothing but dangle from the center field wall as Freeman rounded the bases with his arms hoisted. The Dodgers now lead the series 2-1 and are two wins away from retaining the World Series.

On a night full of broken records, Freeman made sure that the Dodgers merely tied the one for longest World Series game ever played in terms of innings. It was the second-longest in terms of minutes played, at 6hr 39min (the record was set in another game featuring the Dodgers, against the Red Sox in 2018). Freeman also became the first player in baseball history to win two different World Series games with a walk-off home run after ending Game 1 of last year’s World Series with a grand slam.

“To have it happen again a year later,” Freeman said, “It’s kind of amazing and crazy.”

Freeman’s heroics complemented a historic and seemingly inconceivable statistical night from Shohei Ohtani, who became the first player to reach base nine times in a postseason game and the first player since 1906 to have four extra-base hits in a World Series game. Two of those hits were home runs, one of which tied the game in the seventh inning. After that second home run of the night, the Blue Jays walked him in five consecutive plate appearances: four of them intentionally and one on four pitches.

“He’s a unicorn,” Freeman said of Ohtani after the game. “We’re still running out of words to describe a once-in-a-10-generational player.”

Ohtani, as he often does when asked about his greatness, deflected from his own accomplishments to emphasize the team’s victory.

“What I accomplished today is in the context of this game,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, “and what matters the most is we flip the page and play the next game.”

As local time crossed midnight, he added: “I want to go to sleep as soon as possible.”

Ohtani’s seventh-inning home run would be the last run scored for nearly four hours before Freeman ended the game in the 18th. The subsequent 11 innings featured remarkable feats of offensive futility. It was the first time that both teams had at least 15 hits in a World Series game. But they managed just four hits in 26 at-bats with runners in scoring position and combined for 14 strikeouts in extra innings.

The teams surpassed the prior record for number of men left on base: the Blue Jays left 19 on, while the Dodgers stranded 18. The record for a single team entering the night was 15. Between the 10th and 18th innings, the teams combined to leave 20 runners on base. Every position player on the Blue Jays had an at-bat in Monday night’s game and they broke the record with 67 at-bats in a World Series game.

“It was one of the greatest World Series [games] of all time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I’m spent emotionally.”

It was a historic battle of attrition that caused Justin Bieber to leave the game early and will reshape how both teams approach the rest of the series. The Dodgers and Blue Jays used every available arm in their bullpen and combined to throw an astonishing 603 pitches. Blue Jays relief pitcher Eric Lauer recorded more outs (14) than his team’s starting pitcher, Max Scherzer (13). The winning pitcher – Will Klein – threw 72 pitches over four innings, more than Scherzer and far eclipsing his previous professional career high of 56. That outing came in 2021 when he was a member of the minor league Quad Cities River Bandits.

“I looked around in the bullpen and my name was the only one still there,” Klein said with a laugh. “I was just going to go until I couldn’t.”

Had Freeman not homered, the Dodgers were ready to turn to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was just two days removed from his 105-pitch complete game win in Game 2. Yamamoto had never thrown on short rest in his MLB career, but was warming up before Freeman’s homer.

The hitting struggles that both teams endured in the late innings masked a thrilling battle over the first nine. There were six runners thrown out on the bases over the first 10 innings. Both teams had runners thrown out at third base and home plate and the Blue Jays scored a go-ahead run in the seventh after the ball ricocheted off a TV crew member holding a parabolic microphone. Clayton Kershaw, possibly making the final appearance of his decorated 18-year career, induced a key groundout after entering the game with the bases loaded and two outs in the 12th inning.

“I don’t think we’re physically tired. I think you’re just mentally tired because you’re in it every pitch, and every pitch means something in the World Series and in the playoffs,” Freeman said after the game. “So I think we’re all emotionally and mentally drained.”

The Blue Jays, meanwhile, were left to contemplate pushing the reigning champions to their limit, and still walking away with nothing to show for it. Their manager, John Schneider, denied it was a catastrophic blow, though.

“It sucks that it’s late right now, we got to come back and do it again tomorrow, but these guys are going to be more than ready,” Schneider said. “The Dodgers didn’t win the World Series today – they won a game.”

The two teams return to Dodger Stadium for Game 4 on Tuesday, when Ohtani will take the mound to start his first World Series game as a pitcher against former Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber. Ohtani has struck out 19 hitters in 12 postseason innings and sports a 2.25 ERA over those two starts. He will start even though he was on base nine times and was receiving an IV after the game.

“He’s spent. He was on base nine times tonight running the bases,” Roberts said after the game. “But, yeah, he’s taking the mound tomorrow. He’ll be ready.”